If cycle lane bollards don't belong in Architectural Conservation Areas, why do cars?

AndrewJRenko

We wouldn’t need bollards if drivers would just respect traffic markings. Have we tried another RSA appeal to drivers?

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120849681#Comment_120849681

Respect? Wrong country for that.

railer201

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845357#Comment_120845357

The modern car is practically noiseless, apart from wheel contact with roads. Some of us are old enough to remember the stink of horse-sh1t left in situ on roads, until the rain came and washed it away. Be careful of what you wish for in returning to the past !

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851648#Comment_120851648

are you nuts? cars are ridiculously noisy, the noise of traffic can be heard constantly anywhere in a city.

railer201

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851660#Comment_120851660

Parked cars make no noise at all. What you're hearing as I've said is road noise generated by wheel contact with roads. It doesn't seem to bother most people and depending on the road surface can be minimal indeed. Who's being ridiculous here ?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851648#Comment_120851648

Even EVs aren't noiseless, tyre noise and wind noise. But far better than ICE for the local environment. I doubt is there much efficiency difference at lower speeds for an EV since drag isn't an issue in buitt up area and they have instant torque. Most articles even about EVs on efficiency at speed seemed to be based on motorway driving with ICE cars.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851755#Comment_120851755

Parked cars didn't magically appear there. If there is parking there is constant moving into and out of those spaces.

European Environment Agency (EEA) data shows that some 100 million EU citizens are affected by high noise levels, negatively impacting their health. Traffic noise alone is harmful to the health of 40 million EU citizens Also, 8 million are regularly exposed to high traffic noise level at night. As discussed at the April 2017 Noise in Europe Conference, and as outlined in World Health Organization guidelines of October 2018, the increased stringency of EU noise reduction standards requires effective measures such as road surface and/or tyre improvements and better urban planning. The introduction of electric mobility is widely viewed as having the potential to reduce noise in urban areas, but the noise generated by tyres rolling on the road nevertheless needs careful study and further reduction.

Roads: the use of quiet tyres, low-noise road surfaces and reduced road speed limits needs to be considered. In particular, the report recommends that EU legislation on tyres should be strengthened. The Commission will therefore revise noise limits on tyres where needed, on the basis of the UNECE Regulation No 117 on tyres approval. 

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/zero-pollution-new-eu-report-calls-stronger-action-reduce-harmful-noise-pollution-2023-03-20_en

Flinty997

, tires, by far, are the largest contributor to total noise

https://www.tirereview.com/science-tire-noise/

railer201

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851660#Comment_120851660

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851798#Comment_120851798

TM - What you said was 'cars are ridulously noisy' - I'm disputing the ridiculous part - that is all.

Some cyclists it appears, such as yourselves find cars noisy, pretty much every other road user including other cyclists don't. I'm referring to cars in architectural conservation areas as per the thread title.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851855#Comment_120851855

I'm quoting the studies. Not cyclists.

I'm aware of EV noise and car noise from car reviews, and car enthusiast channels. Harry Garage for example puts a sound meter in the cabin on sports car reviews. We assume its engine noise. But mostly it isn't. Modern cars often have artificial noise generators in the cabin, because modern cars are often tuneless, and have no character. Obviously we've just had lockdown where there was vast reduction in noise everywhere due to the lack of cars, especially in urban areas.

You'd have to be deaf not to have noticed it.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851855#Comment_120851855

I'm currently in the middle of St Anne's Park and can hear the roar of tyres from the coast road. The noise pollution from cars is quite ridiculous alright. I'm a drivist as well as a cyclist by the way.

railer201

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851995#Comment_120851995

How very odd, I've never heard the 'ROAR' of tyres from the coast road whilst in St. Annes's Park, unless I positioned myself beside the coast road for the purposes of this thread. Then again we were talking about Architectural surroundings in the city centre which is not exactly the same thing as positioning one's self along beside a busy arterial road at rush hour. As regards car noise in Hume St., with largely parked cars - ger' out of it - that's a joke.

Flinty997

If there's no main roads going through the city centre. Then 30kph isn't going to be a problem.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120851660#Comment_120851660

Yes, but much more noise was heard when traffic was primarily horse-drawn. Modern ICE engines are relatively quiet (and EV engines even quieter, obviously), modern tyres, modern road surfaces — all much quieter than in the past. Horse-drawn traffic mostly used vehicles with iron-bound wheels proceeding along cobbled streets; urban areas were full of constant clatter, and you couldn't hold a conversation in the street without yelling. The very rich would sometimes put down layers of straw in the street outside their houses to try to deaden the noise, but that was of limited effect and required constant renewal.

Flinty997

Since few owned a horse and carriage the sheer "volume" of traffic would be far less..

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861235#Comment_120861235

There was a large amount of commercial traffic. Urban streets were busy (and noisy) even in Victorian times.

Flinty997

In the photos of pre car Dublin there's fraction of the wheeled traffic than there is today. Can't imagine it's was busier a hundred years earlier.

Georgian Dublin grew from 60k-180k so it was a fraction of the size and mostly poor city.

No way it had traffic jams through the city as you do today.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861366#Comment_120861366

Couple of points:

Traffic density doesn't depend on the size of a city but on the density. Victorian Dublin was more densely populated than modern Dublin.

Old photographs of cities are often misleading. Long exposure times mean that only stationary vehicles register, so a street that was in fact quite busy could look empty in photographs.

The issue is not traffic jams; it's traffic noise. Moving traffic makes much more noise that static traffic. So traffic jams weren't the cause of noise in Victorian cities; it was busy, but moving traffic.

Noise-wise, the factor that trumps all the others is the fact that iron-bound wheels were standard on commercial vehicles. By the late nineteenth century cabs, for instance, would mostly have rubber tires. But the great bulk of traffic in the Victorian city was commercial; delivery and distribution of goods (including lots of purchased goods which, today, we would bring home in our cars; less personal transport means more commercial transport). Those vehicles had wooden wheels with iron rims; moving along a cobbled street they were incredibly noisy. And on a busy street the noise was constant during daylight hours. Which is why you had things like people putting straw down in the street. Nobody does that now; why do you imagine they did it then?

It made a huge difference, I think, whether you lived on a busy street or a quiet one, and on whether the street was paved. (Lots of side roads in outer suburbs were unpaved until quite late.) Hume Street was probably relatively quiet, mainly because it's not a thoroughfare to anywhere else. But if you lived on Harcourt Street, say, the volume of iron-wheeled vehicles going to and from the railway station and its warehouses would have meant that it was much noisier than today.

We know this was a problem because there was much talk about it at the time. Apart from the not very effective technique of putting down straw, we have cities in Britain banning wheeled traffic on Sunday mornings, because preachers complain that the noise penetrates into churches and drowns out their sermons; we have cities experimenting with paving the streets with hardwood blocks instead of stone setts to try to reduce noise; we have a campaign to require the Post Office to fit all its vehicle - a vast fleet - with pneumatic tyres. Etc, etc.

Flinty997

Less people less movement. Less vehicles less noise.

Id be interested in hearing about the campaign for pneumatic tyres in the Georgian era.

magicbastarder

there were similar, and loud, objections to the bollards when they went in on griffith avenue. the facebook groups were very vocal about griffith avenue having been 'literally ruined' by them (to pick a more extreme complaint). the council did change the bollards - they added kerb protection and reduced the number of bollards. first link is dated oct 2022, with the newest iteration; second link is dec 2021 with the first iteration, and the third link is sept 2019 before any of the work happened. i just happen to think that both versions with bollards are better than the one with all the cars parked there.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3781284,-6.2624291,3a,75y,95.79h,81.51t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s9Oap65rws0_TgdG3nxwvfw!2e0!5s20221001T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D9Oap65rws0_TgdG3nxwvfw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D297.8424%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3781158,-6.2623975,3a,75y,95.79h,81.51t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sC3dyOAKVN90WWJr5vznnVA!2e0!5s20211201T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3781094,-6.2623826,3a,75y,95.79h,81.51t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1shk0qQ3X_dPe6MX9G-GUlpA!2e0!5s20190901T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120863207#Comment_120863207

agreed, the finished version is by far the nicest

bk

FYI, the bollards on Griffith Avenue were always supposed to be temporary, just to make sure the entrances for drive ways, etc. were in the correct place, before replacing them with the more permanent kerb.

Funny enough, Griffith Avenue is a great example of how these bollards aren't there for Cyclists, they are there to make motorists follow the rules. There are actually large metal bollards around a number of the green areas/trees on the footpath with heavy chains going between them to stop motorists from illegally parking on the footpath and destroying the grass /tree/plants!

It is a really great example of how most of the street furniture is there to try and force motorists to behave.

LOL and look at all those cars illegally parked on the footpath!

Also notice the damage done to the grass. Despite the bollards and chains, they made a mistake of only having them on three sides, not realising that wouldn't stop some motorists! They drive in the sections with driveway entrances and then drive along the footpath (while kids are going to and from school) to only park into these spots from the side with no chains!

Crazy stuff.

Flinty997

You'd have to say with such wide footpaths, why couldn't the cycle lane could have been off road and entirely segregated.

magicbastarder

i'd say it'd have been a pain in the hoop cycling certain parts of griffith avenue if they had done that, having to repeatedly yield to traffic on side roads.

Flinty997

That's a matter of design no?

https://images.app.goo.gl/hsmMhpfscjiVqA8D6

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120863427#Comment_120863427

Its also an incredibly wide road which technically only had one lane each way for most of it so plenty of space for the cycle lane on the road.

The amount of times I've seen cars just full blown driving on the footpath there really does just boggle the mind though.

Flinty997

There's enough space to have proper segregated path. I see this a lot where there massive verges and wide pavements and the cycle lane is squeezed in on the road. I don't get it.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120861668#Comment_120861668

No, not less people, less noise — less density, less noise. The province of Munster has more people than the city of Cork, obviously, but the City of Cork is the noisier place. For the same reason, city centres are noisier places than suburbs. A small but densely populated city is noisier than a large, but spread out, city.

There was no campaign for pneumatic tyres in the Georgian era - the pneumatic tyre wasn't invented until the 1880s andm with the technology of the time, they were only suitable for use on bicycles, handcarts and very light horse-drawn vehicles. It took a long time to develop materials and technologies that would stand up to heavier use. However from early on it was recognised that pneumatic tyres were much quieter than iron rims, and the post office had a large fleet of light mail vans (horse-drawn) that it used to collect mail from postboxes and to carry mails between suburban and city post offices, and between post offices and railway stations. As there were up to six collections and four deliveries a day in Victorian London these vans were in constant use, including in residential areas where there was (relatively) little other commercial traffic; hence the campaign to fit them with pneumatic tyres. This was resisted by the Post Office, who felt that pneumatic tyres would be unreliable — too many flats — and the reliability and timeliness of the mail service would suffer.

It wasn't until vulcanized rubber tyres became available that horse-drawn vehicles were commonly fitted with pneumatic tyres.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120865062#Comment_120865062

We are comparing Georgian Dublin South no cars and 150k to modern Dublin with 1.5 million people and 80k cars crossing the canals into Dublin.

"...The highest noise is found by roads, particularly the M50 and the national roads approaching it, as well as Dublin Airport and pockets of the City centre...."

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/03/18/tyres-road-surfaces-and-speed-being-considered-in-noise-reduction-plans/#:~:text=In%20the%20Dublin%20region%20the,pockets%20of%20the%20City%20centre.

Your trying to prove that cars don't make noise remember.

I know pneumatic tyres hadn't been around in Georgian Dublin. That's why I asked. How far off topic are you hoping to go?

Ultimately this thread is trying to make out cars have less impact on the visual environment than bicycles. The wands they are complaining about are to direct cars. Not bicycles. Bicycles don't have to stay in them. Cars have to say out of the marked lanes. No cars, no wands.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120863427#Comment_120863427

There is actually already a cycle path like this on the footpath on part of Griffith Avenue, down towards the three schools. It is pretty much unusable as a cycle path.

Because it is on the footpath, people walk in it constantly, but worse at School pick up and drop off time, parents and kids stand all over it.

If you look at pictures of it on Google Maps you’ll actually see pictures of people walking their dogs in it with the dogs leash fully across the cycle path!

The only way it would work is if again you put up fencing to separate the cycle path from the footpath.

BTW on this part of Griffith Avenue, there has always been an on road cycle path too, you just wouldn’t know it with all the cars parked in it, as it was just a crummy painted cycle path.